IT_EUREKA: Main Prize of UAH 100,000 Goes to a Virtual Psychologist

On October 5 and 6, the finals of IT_EUREKA 2020 took place! This year about 100 projects participated in the competition, and 17 of them were shortlisted in early April. What teams and projects impressed the jury with their pitches and made a strong claim for the main prize?

The preparation to the final Pitch Days IT_EUREKA 2020 took the teams nearly six months. Throughout this time, they attended mentor sessions, implemented the advice of their expert mentors, and perfected their projects. The teams got help from technical specialists and business experts from Sigma Software and Sigma Software Labs, representatives of businesses, educational establishments, and investment funds. All in all, there were about 100 hours of individual and team meetings held.

Though 17 teams were shortlisted for the final stage, not all of them reached the Final Pitch Days. Three teams did not stay the distance for different reasons, but we’ll be happy to introduce the remaining 14 finalists to you.

Medicine – the hottest topic of the hour – did not go unnoticed by IT_EUREKA 2020.

The innovative solution from IOON is not just a project but real alchemy! The portable device IOON turns water into a sanitizer, which effectively fights 99.9% of microbes. In the current situation, it is absolutely indispensable.

The software developed by the Impulsar team allows users to “look into the future” and predict worsening of the health condition of people suffering from autism, dementia, and epilepsy. This software helps to control and analyze patients’ conditions and warns of an approaching crisis. This solution can literally save lives.

The team of Infusion Light offered a solution that enables medical staff of hospitals to monitor the process of intravenous infusion and observe the treatment of all department’s patients simultaneously. Besides, it signals about the planned completion and any changes during the infusions.

The team of Elomia used artificial intelligence and created a virtual psychologist to help people deal with stress, depression, and anxiety. This technology makes a therapist session available for anybody.

However, medicine was not the only topic addressed.

The Fiway team found a solution that provides a stable internet connection in a journey thanks to the 5С technology. The team develops and introduces IT systems in all transport means around the world. So, 5С gives us a great chance to be online anywhere and anytime!

What do you do when you need to compress digital images and videos without the loss of quality and privacy?  Thanks to the unique development of New Age Data Compression we don’t have to worry anymore about the quality of compressed photos or the data on our smartphone even if it gets stolen.

Nowadays, intellectual property may be worth more than any tangible assets. In the current conditions, when many companies move their business online, a solution from the Lawyerd team keeps ward of intellectual property rights. It allows the legal owner to delete a violator’s resource from the internet in one click.

Our country is renowned for its fertile soils. However, any resource gets depleted when used non-stop. One of the finalists of the IT_EUREKA competition, the Agro BІ by HOROS.TECH team, developed a special service for the agricultural sector. Using machine-learning technology, it automatically analyzes the condition of the field’s soil and monitors the state of the crops. It allows agricultural workers to plan future sowing without weakening the existing resources.

For those who are scared of the word ‘renovation’, the Desnovation platform will become a real savior. The team’s virtual assistant provides the user with all resources and tools necessary to bring their ideas to life: from the choice of a design and needed materials to the supervision of the quality of the renovation works done.

What’s your attitude to masks? Not the ones that you get in social media or beauty salons, but smart LED-masks? The Qudi mask team developed a cool mask that can turn anyone into a party king. This mask tracks your head movements and reacts to them by showing different emotions: joy or sadness, or it can say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and glow in all colors when you are short for words.

Among the finalists of the competition, there were also platforms that provided the following solutions:

The P.aid (PEOPLE Aid for brands and society) crowdsourcing platform is aimed at solving marketing tasks and social initiatives by involving thousands of users. Thanks to the P.aid mobile app any user or company can initiate a project or just join many large-scale cultural, social or environmental projects.

The Projectium.Network platform allows to tell the world about your startup, find like-minded professionals, and work together to bring the boldest ideas to life.

The chichi mobile app allows to find your beauty expert and book an appointment immediately. Its main aim is to find and book services that suit your budget, your preferences and your schedule.

Can you imagine what a hard time the jury had choosing the winner? Each project was exciting, each pitch was charismatic, each team deserved to win! To see it with your own eyes, watch the video of Pitch day 1:

The jury had special evaluation criteria developed, according to a 5-point scale. The key points were the following: understanding of their own competitive advantage, market analysis, innovation, a business model, ways and methods to attract customers, marketing and teamwork.

This year the jury included co-founders of Sigma Software, Valery Krasovsky and Dmitry Vartanian, the founder of UTEW Tech Tribe Oleksandra Govorukha, representatives of funds: Valuetech Seed Fund, Konrad Wysmulek, and RST Venture For Earth, Bartłomiej Dąbkowski, director of Ukrainian Startup Fund, Pavlo Kartashov, the managing director of Quarter Partners fund Denis Valvachev, the head of Center for Entrepreneurship of Ukrainian Catholic University Ivan Petrenko, and the founder of the Come It Up agency Yury Zaliznyak.

The moderator of the Final Pitch Days was Veronika Korzh, General Manager of the Sigma Software Labs project. She was at the very center of the intrigue and witnessed the heat of the moment.

When exchanging impressions of the final, the jurors pointed out that all the teams demonstrated a very high level of competence and presentation skills.

After the partners and jurors shared their impressions, we held our breath and proceeded to awarding the teams. To keep the intrigue, it started with granting awards from the partners of the event:

• Individual meetings with a further discussion of cooperation, funding and development from Quarter Partners were shared among three teams at a time: Lawyerd, Elomia, and Projectium Network.
• A year of residence in Sigma Software Labs went to the team of Projectium Network.
• A two-month course “David wins: the power of asymmetrical thinking” by Adrian Slywotsky from the Center for Entrepreneurship of Ukrainian Catholic University was obtained by the team of Lawyerd.
• A cheque for 5,000 Polish zloty from Polish Ukrainian Startup Bridge also went to the Lawyerd team.

So who won the main prize?

See all winners announced in the recording of Pitch day 2:

On summing up all scores from the jury, the winner of the IT_EUREKA 2020 competition was announced to be the Elomia team, which received a certificate for UAH 100,000 from the organizer of the competition – Sigma Software company. The project of Elomia has a significant social influence, as its aim is to make psychological support more available for everybody. We are sure this will help many people to overcome this period of hardships and challenges more easily!

On behalf of the organizers of the competition we thank all the teams, which decided to try their hand and applied to take part – it was a confident step towards their goals. Together with the mentor team, we are proud to observe the achievements of our finalists and happy to see their success. We congratulate the winners of special nominations – the teams that were distinguished by our jury and partners. Our sincerest congratulations to the main winner of the IT_EUREKA 2020 competition. We thank the jury and our partners! We are also grateful to the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine for supporting the event.

See you at IT_EUREKA 2021!

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